Customer and potential customer outreach is an important aspect of conducting business. Because of the multiple communications types at their disposal, organizations can perform this outreach using any number of contact types, including telephone calls, facsimile transmissions, electronic mails (“e-mails”), instant messaging and postal mail.
Recently, federal and state solicitation laws and regulations have mandated that a consumer, who expresses a desire not to be solicited by telephone, facsimile, or other electronic media such as e-mail, not be called, faxed or e-mailed. By regulation, such as the United States Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Telemarketing Sales Rules (TSR), a business must maintain a list of telephone numbers for such consumers, known as a “Do-Not-Call” (DNC) list, and take appropriate measures to ensure that outgoing calls to telephone numbers on a DNC list are somehow blocked. The federal government is also considering the establishment of a federal “Do-Not-E-Mail” list to enable a consumer to prevent electronic mail solicitations.
The DNC lists can include one or more lists specific to a particular business, as well as state-wide, national and industry-imposed lists such as the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Telephone Preference Service (TPS) list. A single violation of a federal and/or State DNC regulation may result in a substantial fine. Thus, compliance management is a particularly critical and challenging issue for businesses that rely on solicitations as a core marketing tool.